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Monday, 21 November 2011

Video games have certainly come a long way. They originally started with the simple ball, two sticks and synthesized metal beeps of the earliest games of the seventies, through to Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Pac Man of the eighties; and later Ultima and Doom of the nineties. We now have the utterly immersive, endlessly customizable first player shooter that is the multi million dollar media phenomena, “Modern Warfare 3” console game.

Modern Warfare 3 was launched earlier this month with reports that the first 5 days of sales exceeded US$775 million. Compare this with an opening weekend gross of US$470 million for the latest Harry Potter film, and one can see that these types of video games are no longer the exclusive preserve of teenage boys hiding in their “caves”, but are a mainstream and accepted choice of entertainment for all.

Computing power has come along just as far. It is commonly said that the standard home console game machine has more computing power than was available on the Apollo rockets that flew to the moon. This certainly shows in the depth of the computer graphics of the Modern Warfare series. The latest version has graphics that move realistically and smoothly. Sound comes with real depth. Explosions will even cause the hand controller to vibrate and shake.

Modern Warfare 3 comes with three different modes. There is firstly, the campaign mode, in which the player essentially follows a story dictated by the game. This takes about 9 hours to complete. There is a “Special Operations” mode, where one or two players on a split screen have a number of set scenarios of increasing difficulty to complete. These scenarios are based on the main game and play like an arcade game as opposed to the main campaign mode, which follows a narrative, like a movie. In the third, multi player mode, it is possible to join across the net to play in competitive teams in various scenarios and scenes from the game.

I have completed the campaign mode and am presently going through the special operations mode together with my beloved husband. Traipsing across a war torn Paris in body armour and calling in airstrikes on vicious paramilitaries may not have been my idea of a weekend in Paris, but it certainly beats Jamie Oliver on the satellite for an evenings’ entertainment.

I have not really played the multi-player mode, as the idea of being machine gunned by a teenager across the net in Finland has never appealed to me. However, I understand that it is in this mode in which the game comes into its own, where it is possible to upgrade, up date and individualise the game endlessly.

Campaign mode, is the one that most people will play. In it, you simultaneously control and follow the exploits of, variously, a US Marine, a Russian Member of an International Special Forces outfit called “Task Force 141”, a Russian Security Officer, a member of the SAS, a gunner in an AC-130 flying gunship and finally as one of the stars of the franchise, as Captain Price a former SAS commando, who heads “Task Force 141”.

The action takes place in various locations, invariably war torn and uncomfortable. The protagonist starts in New York City, shooting your way into a familiar looking stock exchange building against an invading Russian army. It moves on to a Russian submarine in New York City harbor, then to Northern India, the Horn of Africa, the London Underground takes a pounding, as does the Eiffel Tower. Other locations include a Presidential Airbus, the city of Prague and finally, the bloody denouement takes place on the rooftop of a familiar looking luxury hotel in the Middle East.

There are parts that are certainly immersive, like when you are creeping around on your belly trying not to be detected, in a hostile Prague. At times you have to play dead, when the enemy is just a breath away. You can imagine smelling their body odour. This part concludes when your player has to breathlessly escape hordes of angry soldiers, carrying a wounded comrade. Am I jaded? Is it sensory overload? I have not come away from a movie with the same elevated heart beat and sweaty palms as when I have completed this stage.

If you think there is nothing for the girls, think again. Motion capture technology has given my favorite character - Captain Price, a cat-like grace and agility which sets off well against a rather tough and gruff exterior.

It is a shame that this may be the last of the present series of the Modern Warfare games, but as each one has gotten better than the last, I can’t wait for whatever next is to come.

Sunday, 13 November 2011

I really should have started this article on London while I was physically IN London and not cruising 37000 feet above a sea of white cottony cloud as far as the eye can see, on the plane back to Brunei.

London starts to disappear from the psyche soon after the aircraft door shuts and the plane taxies down the Heathrow tarmac. Four hours into the flight, and after wolfing down prawn mayo sandwiches from Costa, the duty free shops in Heathrow begin to be a distant memory like the loose change you unsuccessfully tried to offload there. Even further from my mind are the cab rides (scary even when friendly), the department stores that sell everything from coffins to toe nails. The traffic, oh the traffic, and people- at last count 7.6 million on the taxman's books and perhaps another 2 million that slipped in due to lax border controls. London is a melting pot of sizeable proportions, and a place that is both familiar and unfamiliar.

Having studied and lived in the city in the early 90s, to me nothing much seems to have changed although a lot also certainly has. Heathrow and the arrival process is a constant; arriving in from Brunei at 6am, it's cold or really cold depending on the time of year. The drive into the city is always familiar, the early fog welcoming travellers both local and international all sitting bumper to bumper on the motorway. Most people on their way to work, while you have that familiar South East Asian traveller feeling of, "Dude, I'm wearing a winter coat"; the early onset of jet lag creeping in.

You are not really a Londoner if you take a black cab from Heathrow so 3 years in London 20 years ago certainly makes me a tourist this time round. The black cab fare from Heathrow cost me 200 Brunei. If anything has changed, the black cab fare has certainly gotten more expensive as the years go by.

There is the familiar shopping at Boots, Primark, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and Harrods. Apparently a new haunt for Bruneians is Westfield, an hour out of London. The Bieber was just there, switching on the Christmas lights.

Though the shops really have not changed much, the shop assistants, especially at the make up counters, are increasingly from the Middle East and Eastern Europe. This matches the clientele. A majority of shoppers appeared to be from the Middle East. One spoilt young Kim Kardashian look alike stuck in my mind for threatening to fire “all the staff once I get back to Los Angeles”.

The taste of London, for me at least, is the tuna or prawn mayonnaise sandwich innit, and thanks to the Japanese restaurant I ate at one evening, sustainable fish from Cornwall.

This to me is London at its best. Civility, thought and concern still stands out as a warm trait of the tired and desensitized Londoner. What with recession, the weather, the foul air and traffic, the influx of immigration, London still manages to want to try to look after the environment, and to campaign to change our mind set on this.

While even the inventors of sashimi seem not to care about the pillaging of the oceans, the British apparently now do. I invited a dear friend of mine from Sarawak who has spent a considerable amount of time in London completing her studies in all things holistic, for dinner at a “sustainable sushi restaurant”. With the help of Google Maps, we walked (natch) to Soseki.

Soseki is Japanese restaurant that is proud that it sources its fish from sustainable and local sources. There is not a Bluefin tuna in sight. Unagi, apparently unsustainably over travelled is off the menu. Soseki is a taste of Japan right smack in the center of the City financial district, nestling under the eaves of The Gherkin (called that due to it resembling a gherkin, although I could think of another phallic nickname for it). We sat in one of the booths by the window and looked down at the people coming in and out of office buildings, huddling together every few minutes or so, for a nicotine fix.

A charming Japanese waitress by the name of Rika served us. Soseki had all the quintessential Japanese accouterments:- music, tableware, and a menu that looked like it came from ancient Japan. Indeed the décor was more Japanese than Japanese restaurants in Japan, which are either minimalistic or dramatic pastiches of European hunting lodges. Nothing terribly unfamiliar about our dinner, save for the thought of eating sushi in the most morally acceptable way. You know that the fish you are eating did not log a copious carbon footprint or is on the endangered list for that matter. Fish was specifically sourced from sustainable fisheries off the English coast. So we had monkfish, turbot and brill, tuna was yellow fin.

We ate our fill of morally impeachable sushi and sashimi and went out into the chilly evening. After a sustainable dinner, you feel like being at one with the universe, with moon and the stars. Unfortunately in London, light pollution is a problem and there is naught a star in the sky. And with this thought comes the paradox of London, a society that has pretty much raped and pillaged the earth and its natural resources and now only realizing that the fish in the ocean must be saved, and wanting to bring back the dark ages (plans are afoot to build a "dark park" a few hours out of London) so they can see the stars.

As I write the final paragraph of this article, I can see the island of Borneo coming up in the distance. In less than an hour I will be home, a home where I still feel very much safe, a home where I take for granted the blue skies, the green jungles and the starry nights. London seems very far now but I remember its lessons well, that we must start to preserve all these things folks, before we end up losing them all.

(PS. I also appreciate the irony of writing a piece on the environment while travelling long haul, but I had to go for work, and not a holiday).

Wonderful news about scholarships now available to citizens and permanent residents in the private sector granted by the Department of Economic and Development or Jabatan Perkhidmatan Kemajuan dan Ekonomi (JPKE) was released to the public this week. What is important is that these scholarships are offered without requiring that the applicant promise to work for the Government for a number of years in return. That there was hardly a ripple in our public psyche about it, however, which made it rather apparent, just how small our private sector is when compared to the behemoth that is our civil service.

His Majesty's government offering a chance for those working in the private sector to better themselves is a great help to the country. It underlines the acceptance that the private sector plays an important and integral part in wealth and job creation.

I reckon that the move by the JPKE was designed to encourage citizens and permanent residents to work in the private sector because there are now some additional benefits to it. Let's hope that parents can now start encouraging their children to work for private companies as opposed to the traditional aspiration to work in the public sector. Many stories are told of the lament of Human Resources Managers in private companies across Brunei of the high number of turnover with many employees working for them with a temporary state of mind while waiting for a job with the government.

One question to ponder is whether in reality SMEs can afford to give time off for their employees to go off for continuing education programmes that are encouraged by the Government. One online commentator also asked how they would be able to get on a course in the first place if they could not show adequate means? There are also options for part-time courses, which could be difficult for some, especially with families and a tough workload. But we should remember that at the end of the day it is hard work and commitment in itself that is good for the soul (and employment prospects).

What did make a ripple in the public psyche was the vicious rumor of persons being engaged to chop off and collect the heads of young children, sufficient for the purposes of various infrastructure projects. Text messages, FB posts and tweets circulated about how headhunters (or "pengaits" in Malay) needed a couple of hundred heads to build a bridge. The urban legend goes that these heads are needed to be placed in the foundations of new constructions to ensure their strength and safety. Really, I would have thought that in this day and age we should put our faith in good and judicious use of a compass, protractor and spirit level, to ensure sound engineering, as opposed to the other type of spirit(ual) reinforcement.

It got to a point where the Royal Brunei Police Force issued a press release that the rumour is false and warned the public against spreading the false information.

While I'm at it, the Public Order Act states that anyone who creates false reports or statements that can cause the public fear or grief can be prosecuted and punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine of $3,000. The Public Order Act goes on to penalise nefarious rumour mongers who, either orally or in writing or in any other way, spreads such information that is known to be false may be prosecuted and punished with imprisonment of up to a period of five years or a fine of $5,000. So I would advise you to think before you text, post and tweet!

The final observation is that it is a little dispiriting to know that the topic that got people talking on this week was not opportunities to be had in the private sector but centered on spurious and dangerous gossip.